“Working in a company where it’s all about the benefit for the patient was a very clear choice.”






Danish by birth, but educated internationally, Selina Khan has now lived in the Netherlands for almost ten years. Last May she began working as a scientist with Crucel in Leiden’s Bioscience Park. In between her hectic program she found time to chat about her decision to start a career in industry, and about her personal experiences when she was doing scientific research in the TI Pharma project focusing on TLR vaccine receptors.

Selina has built up an extensive curriculum over the years. Having been awarded her university degree in Denmark, she moved to Switzerland to become a PhD student at the University of Zürich. Selina then became involved in one of the first TI Pharma projects in the Netherlands. “It was a big project,” she explains. “The consortium comprised many partners. That wasn’t always easy. Collaborating was quite difficult, since there were so many people involved from a broad range of specialties, but on the other hand it enabled far more discoveries to be made. And it was thrilling too. I’m still pleased with the discoveries that were made, and the project results were also good.

“As the project was nearing its end I was offered an opportunity to start working in industry. The TI Pharma courses helped me to make my decision. It had given me an introduction to working as a scientist in industry. It made me feel much more confident in the sense that I was taking the right decision. And in fact throughout recent months I have really discovered that working in a biopharmaceutical company also entails great challenges. Managing scientific research on the vaccines side really is a nice job. Especially since one knows that the results will benefit patients.”